MovieScope

Review By Robert Snyder

Five precocious kids do not make for one Macaulay Culkin… particularly if the pre-teens are those in “Unaccompanied Minors.”

But maybe the mess that is “Minors” is not totally the fault of the juvenile talent. It’s more than likely that director/co-writer Paul Feig (“Freaks and Geeks”) has a lot to do with the disaster. After all, he’s no John Hughes, the filmmaker largely responsible for Culkin’s “Home Alone” mega-hits.

Feig takes the premise of five mischievous kids stranded at an airport on Christmas Eve, gives them a Scrooge-like authority figure (Lewis Black) as their foil and hopes to make “Home Alone” multi-millions. Unfortunately, lack of invention all around is the reason why the holiday offering dove to the bottom of the box office top ten ($3.7 million) in its second week. At the screening I attended with my 13-year-old twins, I heard little laughter and a few groans from parents like myself who wished they’d chosen “The Pursuit of Happiness,” a winner at Number One ($27 million) on opening weekend.

Traveling between divorced parents, the Magnificent Five find themselves stuck in a mid-western airport being buried by a major snowstorm. If they had been good little boys and girls, the five could have been put up in a fancy hotel with the other flyers. However, mean passenger relations manger Oliver Porter (Black) decides to punish the brats by sticking them in empty airport holding room.

The five launch a series of covert Navy Seal-type operations, predicable to audience members but not Porter and his dumbbell assistant Zach (Wilmer Valderrama). The most exciting is a group canoe ride down a snowy slope to the hotel. Between the pranks, Feig allows the young stars to bond and even do a few dance numbers to the prepackaged updated Christmas music. The gags are as flat as stale Coca Cola. The effect should drive families out into the mall in search of a decent DVD to wash the bad taste away.

Give yourselves a treat for the holiday: Rent or buy “Home Alone” or “Home Alone 2.” But, by all means, miss “Unaccompanied Minors.”